Play your multimedia files where and when you want to with this cool Windows app.

Multimedia is a big deal. Apple’s iTunes is a multibillion dollar business. Apple concurred the world because of the iPod and iTunes, so, having the right kind of multimedia player for your computing preferences and experience is important. This is one of the reasons why I like apps like MPCStar. It’s a freeware multimedia app for Windows.

MPCSTAR is an all-in-one multimedia app. It consists of a video player, an audio player and a number of different audio and video codecs, that coupled with its conversion utility will allow you to put your video where you want to play it, in the format that is best suited for it. You can also download content from the internet and play it with MPCStar. The app is user friendly and can play a number of different type of multimedia formats. MPCStar is also free and doesn’t contain any kind of spyware or adware.

MPCStar reminds me of the multimedia players that I used back in the in the Windows 95 and Windows 98 era, though the app works with Windows 2000 to Windows 7. The big things that you won’t see here are mobile device support of ANY kind and the complete and total lack of any kind of a content store. While MPCStar is good at playing your multimedia files, I wouldn’t expect too much out of it in terms of library management. The app really reminds me of WinAmp and other type players with basic album support for cover art and other file tags.

MPCStar also hasn’t been updated in well over three years, so don’t expect any kind of additional support for the app, either. It is the way it is. Its good at what it does; and the interface is really great, but what it does seems stuck in 1998…

Apple has a lot of cash. $156B USD to be exact, and $138B USD of it, or just about 88.50% is kept in banks outside the US. To the unfinancially initiated, like me, this seems curious. However, when you consider the 35% tax hit ($48.3B USD) that Apple would be charged to bring the money back to the United States, it’s no wonder they don’t think twice about it. Spending $$48.3B to bring back just $89.7B isn’t worth the hit. So, the money stays outside the US, and Apple deprives the US of the tax revenue.

Apple needs a place to park the money, and it – like nearly every other large corporate entity – banks a lot of it in Ireland. They have much kinder tax laws, making it more fiscally responsible for Apple to store it there. However, this makes it difficult for Apple to use it the way they want to; and it would be a lot easier for them to bring the money home.

As such, the US Government is currently considering a tax holiday that would allow Apple to make a one-time transfer of its cash hoard back into US banks. The last time this happened in 2004, the government lowered the tax rate to 5.25%. However, at that time, Apple was still three years away from releasing the iPhone and six years away from releasing the iPad. It wasn’t able to take advantage of the tax break.

Recently, Apple has been the target of a US government cash into its tax payments. This effort, and the resulting news coverage on Apple’s – as well as other organization’s – legal use of Ireland’s corporate tax haven, has caused the European Union to take a much longer, more scruitinous look at those laws. While Apple hasn’t broken any laws with its international tax policies – Apple paid over $7.0B in US Federal, corporate taxes in fiscal 2013 – the company wants permanent tax reform in the US.

The US Federal Highway Trust is out of money at the end of August 2014. With major road repairs to major infrastructure – like I-80, which crosses the Continental US from Coast to Coast, East to West – the US government must do something. For its part, Apple is willing to repatriate its large cash hoard, but won’t without a tax repatriation holiday and without permanent tax reform.

This particular issue is going to linger on for quite a while. While I’m not one for financial news, I will update this story if anything interesting develops over the next few months.